


clean up that blood all over your paws

by viscemoth



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, mentions of canon-typical violence and unethical science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27487222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscemoth/pseuds/viscemoth
Summary: Snippets of Jonny, post-New Texas, pre-the rest of the crew, and the small comforts he finds in the interim.
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Octokittens, The Aurora & Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	clean up that blood all over your paws

**Author's Note:**

> some quick notes:  
> \- the idea of jonny & octokittens is inspired by a post by tired-fandom-ndn on tumblr  
> \- the idea of new texas being an asteroid is also based on a tumblr post, but it's one i saw in passing in the tag and don't remember the op. afaik this idea doesn't interfere with canon, and i thought it was pretty fitting for jonny's story to both begin and end on a backwater asteroid, since a few other mechs' stories start and end in similar ways.  
> \- i mess around a bit with canon in terms of timeline. technically, jonny wins the aurora as the revolution is starting, so it's probably right before or right around when nastya's family is killed. however, i'd forgotten about that, and had liked the idea of jonny getting to know aurora before nastya shows up, so now he and carmilla hang around on cyberia for a few decades before the revolution gets into full swing.  
> \- jonny is probably ooc here. like really ooc, i don't really know how to write him? instead i will attribute that to the fact that this takes place long before the rest of the crew, and therefore long before we ever hear from the 'current' him in the albums, and not to my inability to write him, obviously.  
> \- as with every other fic i post i have no proper beta and never have the patience to read through my fics when they're done, so if you find some kind of error, feel free to call me out in the comments
> 
> lastly, the title of this fic is from 'putting the dog to sleep' by the antlers.
> 
> enjoy!

The first night off of New Texas, Jonny found himself breaking down.

He didn't know why. Hell, he was glad to be off of that backwater asteroid, and had gotten revenge (or justice, depending on how you saw it) at the same time: revenge on his father, for all he'd put him through; revenge on Jack, the sleazy bastard, for being at the heart of it; revenge on the entire casino that was a backdrop for the whole damn thing.

Another thing: the doctor was… nice, for a certain definition of the word. Nicer than his father had ever been, that's for damn sure. She'd even given him the only room on their tiny, shitty ship, tiny and shitty though the room was, and had taken the lab for herself. Though, now that he thought about it, he wasn't actually sure if that meant anything or not. He didn't know jack shit about vampire biology; he'd always assumed they didn't exist, were just another one of those stories made up to scare kids into behaving and not sneaking out at night. For all he knew, she didn't even need to sleep.

… Still, it was a nice gesture, he guessed.

None of that accounted for the way he was reacting, though. Things were _good_ , now, they were going to get better. Even if Carmilla was kind of creepy, and he didn't have any family left in the world—other than her, he guessed, if he wanted to count her as family. She was already better family than what he had had before. And this ship was better than the tiny house he had had back on that asteroid.

Things were going to be looking up, he told himself, as he sniffled and tried to will himself to sleep.

(He didn't get any sleep that first night.)

—

To say it got better would be a lie.

To say he got used to it would be more accurate.

Things had seemed okay, at first, despite how he felt that first night. A definite improvement from his previous life, at any rate. They'd traveled around, the Doc taking care of her shady business while he fucked off and did whatever he wanted, as long as he stuck nearby, or else he'd be stranded on whatever planet they were on when she inevitably took off without him.

Things didn't change immediately when he was mechanized, though it was definitely the turning point. It wasn't something he liked to talk about, wasn't something he liked to think about; it was something he'd had no choice in and had resented Carmilla for ever since. Still resented her for, years upon centuries upon millennia later. After she ripped his still-beating heart out of his dying body and replaced it with a metal contraption that ticked instead of beating, his dying replaced with unending life, they got along less and less. He didn't know if something in him had changed along with his heart, or if it was her, finally taking off her mask, or if it was both of them.

They started arguing, him getting irritated and then her snapping back until one of them yelled, and when she would raise her voice (sometimes after him, sometimes not) he would flinch and guilt would flash across her face and she would apologize, try and draw him close, and— _dammit_ , he wanted to hate it, but it was only a few years since he'd been mechanized and he was still a fucking kid. She thought of herself as his mother, he her child, and his own mother was long dead but he still longed for something to replace that warmth.

After a while, he stopped getting so upset. Oh, he still got angry, and he was still terrified of her, deep down, but he learned it was better not to show it. Better not to give her the chance to try and—turn it around, try and make it seem like everything was _okay_. The rage would die down, and they'd get along for a few days before it blew up again, but there wasn't that sick sense of maybe, _maybe_ it's safe this time.

Jonny found he _far_ preferred it that way.

—

Decades later on the coldest planet he'd ever been to, Jonny slid to the floor of the blood-splattered bridge of the ship he'd just won, scrubbing at his temple with his hand to try and get rid of his own drying blood. He hung around for an hour, drained the last bottle of Standart vodka in the known universe, two hours, decided that standing around was fucking boring, and set out to explore the ship. The Doc had said to wait for her; she didn't say he had to wait right by the door.

So, he started walking. As he did so, it hit Jonny just how _big_ the ship was. He had known that this ship was large from the moment Carmilla had asked him to go win it for them—it was half of the reason she'd wanted it in the first place, from how she talked—but _goddamn,_ it was a big fucking ship. He was pretty sure he could get lost in here, if he wasn't careful.

As he explored the ship, peering down twisted corridors and cursing the low light—seriously, did these people not know how to replace lights when they burnt out?—Jonny could have sworn he felt the ship humming underneath him, almost in response to his presence, as though it were… greeting him?

That was—ridiculous. He was letting the spooky atmosphere of the place get to him: it was quiet, and empty, and dark, and _very fucking big_ , and it was just unsettling him. He'd seen plenty of things he couldn't have imagined being real before he step foot off New Texas, but he was pretty sure _sentient spaceships_ weren't one of them.

… Even so, it wouldn't hurt to look around, and check out the ship to make sure there weren't any actual humans hiding out in here. The crew of officers that he had killed—that had killed themselves, semantics—seemed awfully small now that he got a better look at the size of this ship, and though it was likely that the rest of the crew were out and about, it was still better to be sure. Even if he didn't think these people seemed like the kind to lie in wait just to ambush a scrawny kid.

(He hated his stature, but it did have its uses, at times, when people would underestimate him.)

After a bit of looking and calling out (though that wouldn't really draw anyone out if they were hiding from him) for other people, Jonny finally noticed movement. It was pretty dark where he was at, and he couldn't make out the shape very well. He didn't think it was human, or at least not Cyberian navy. Regardless, he's going to have to take care of it; the Doc had just said to get this ship and wait, but by _get the ship_ she very well could have meant _make sure there won't be anything left to keep us from keeping the ship even if it's not part of the original crew_ and he didn't want to chance pissing her off. Pissing off Doctor Carmilla, he had quickly learned, was something you _did not_ do.

So, he waited until he saw movement again, raised his sixgun, and fired. He hit the whatever-it-was in one shot, no surprises there, so he walked up to it, and—

What.

What the fuck was that.

He had no idea what this thing was. It was small, a mangled mess of too many limbs, and when he nudged it with the tip of his boot, it— _eugh—_ oozed.

Yeah, he wasn't going to be the one to deal with that. Damn the doctor. She could get as pissed at him as she wanted, but if this ship had some kind of eldritch infestation, he would let her handle it.

—

Carmilla didn't care about their weird infestation, surprisingly—though that could have been because the creatures seemed to avoid her at all costs, so maybe she didn't know—and they didn't cause any problems, so the two settled in without issue. They moved the ship to a different location in order to keep anyone from coming after them for stealing from the navy, but they didn't leave the planet right away. Carmilla said there was something she still needed to take care of, but they had arrived early, and she had to wait for the right moment, or something.

Whatever it is, she didn't ask Jonny to help, and he didn't offer. He kept to himself, letting her go about her business without him in the way. The planet they were on was _fucking cold,_ especially compared to where he was from, and so he found the majority of his now-free time spent on the ship.

There wasn't really a lot to do, it being a stolen navy ship, but Jonny found it was easy to spend hours just exploring it. The ship was like a maze, the corridors twisting in and back on themselves, no discernible order to any of it.

That was what he found himself doing, one night when he wasn't able to sleep, kept awake by thoughts of things he would sooner just forget. He got out of bed and just started walking, trusting the labyrinthine design of the ship and the act of focusing on not getting lost to keep his mind off his own thoughts. He was also pretty sure the Doc wasn't around, somewhere off-ship, or else he wouldn't have been walking around in his fucking pajamas.

As he walked, his thoughts turned instead to the ship itself. Since they'd started living there, he'd begun to notice a weird sort of sensation, almost like—being watched? Like not being alone. It should have been disconcerting, but it wasn't; instead, it was almost comforting. The Doc hadn't said much about the ship—was real cagey about it, in fact—but he was starting to get the idea that maybe there was more to the idea of a _sentient ship_ than he'd originally thought. That thought, too, should have been disconcerting.

Jonny was interrupted from his thoughts as he came across a few of the things he had seen when first exploring the ship. He hadn't seen any up close since then, mostly just out of the corner of his eye—they definitely seemed to be afraid of the Doc, hell, they might have been afraid of him, he'd shot one of them. Either way, they didn't seem scared of him at that moment, a few of them even creeping forward towards where he stood.

Normally, he would have shot them for trying to get close to him, but—he was tired, and in a weird mood, and so just watched them as they oozed across the corridor floor. As they got closer, he could see that they looked a bit like cats, but also, not really like cats at all. He wasn't one hundred percent sure, having never seen a cat in person, only in pictures, but he was pretty sure cats weren't supposed to have eight legs and no tail and weird, luminescent eyes with no pupils. He crouched down in front of one of them and held his hand out to it, which is something he was pretty sure you were supposed to do with cats. Again, not really a cat, but it leaned forward all the same, sniffed at him, and then butted its head against his knuckles.

 _Oh._ It was—soft, _really_ soft, actually, even if it was also a bit… goopy, and slimy. Its fur was soft and downy, and he had no idea if cats were normally supposed to be this soft, but he easily lost track of how long he crouched there, petting it, before he suddenly felt another one crawl up his back. Startled, he spun around and tried to dislodge it on instinct, but its little legs were stronger than they seemed, wrapped around his neck and holding on tight. He gave up after a moment, and decided that it wouldn't be any harm to leave it there. He didn't think it could hurt him—well, it might be able to bite him, but they probably couldn't kill him unless they swarmed, and even if they did, it wouldn't stick.

Jonny ended up leaving it there as he wandered back to his room, far on the other side of the ship from the Doc's lab, and didn't notice the few creeping along behind him as he headed back. He let it stay attached as he crawled back into his bed, finally feeling it leave him as he passed out.

When he woke up in the morning, it was to find a whole colony of the damn things having taken up residence on his bed, surrounded by tiny, purring bodies that were probably leaving weird slime stains on his sheets. He would be pissed, should be pissed, but last night was the first night he'd slept without nightmares of gunshots and blood and fire and cold, cold smiles, and, well. Who was he to complain about a good night's sleep.

—

Jonny ended up killing the Doc.

He hadn't _meant_ to, which is probably why he'd been able to in the first place. She had been doing what was supposed to be routine maintenance on his heart when suddenly she had nudged up against something that she never had before, and he didn't know what it was but it _hurt_. He didn't know if she had just slipped, or if she had lied about doing routine maintenance, and honestly he didn't know which was worse. He had flinched and she'd grabbed onto him to keep him still—hadn't used restraints, hadn't needed to in quite a while just for maintenance—and he'd panicked and had shot her in the head before he'd realized what it was he was doing.

Then he was running, because when she woke up—and it wouldn't be long, nothing ever kept her down for long—she would be _pissed_. He didn't want to face whatever punishment she'd make up for that. Even having lived on the Aurora for a few years now, he didn't know his way around well, and quickly found himself getting lost. He was just running, heading away, away, away from the Doc's lab blindly, until suddenly the door in front of him slammed shut and he had to skid to a stop to keep from slamming himself into it. One further down opened instead, leading in a slightly different direction.

Was.

Was the Aurora trying to help him?

… Or was it trying to lead him back to Carmilla?

He stood frozen in indecision for a moment before jolting as he heard the Doc's scream of rage in the distance. She was awake now, and he couldn't waste time standing around not knowing what to do—he may not know his way around the ship, but she very clearly did. He made up his mind and decided to chance trusting Aurora, dashing through this new door.

It went on like that for several minutes. Doors whooshed open in front of him and slammed shut behind him as he made hairpin turns and ran as fast as his feet could carry him, an arm clenched over his still-bloody shirt to keep it closed as pain lanced through his chest with every step. Eventually the Aurora led him to a vent, and he was _very_ suspicious of that, but then he thought he could hear stomping footsteps nearby and the choice was easy. He heaved himself into the vent, having to bite down on his tongue to keep a grunt of pain from escaping him as his chest pressed up against the sharp edge of the opening. He could only hope he didn't leave a trail of blood leading directly to where he was, and that he could stay hidden long enough for the Doc's rage to calm.

He dragged himself through the vent with his arms, army crawling through the tight space. He took his time, trying both to keep quiet and not agitate the pain in his chest any further. Eventually a hatch in the vent opened, and he let out a quiet yelp of surprise as he was dumped into a pile of something soft.

And also squirming.

Getting his bearings about him after being dropped several feet through the air, Jonny lifted up his head and looked around himself. The Aurora had led him to a nest of octokittens, apparently, and as he looked around the room—if it could even be called that, it was barely six feet in any direction—it seemed like the only ways to and from this little recess was through vents. Judging by the cables running up and down the wall and the panels hiding what he could only assume was complex wiring, it seemed to be some sort of service area, meant only for engineers to do maintenance on the ship. Only now it had been taken over by octokittens.

Not caring too much about the details of the room beyond how easy it was to for the Doc to find him—not _too_ easily, it seemed, especially with Aurora apparently helping him—Jonny curled inward on himself, trying to ease some of the pain of leaving maintenance on his heart half-done. The panel of his chest was still undone, but keeping his shirt wrapped tight around it kept it in place well enough and he could creep back into the lab later to screw it back on. As he lay there, he felt an octokitten squirm its way between his arms and his chest, and—start licking at his blood. Okay. At least it would help clean him up a bit, he figured. And the soft pile of them was warm, if slightly goopy, and the kittens were purring in a way that could be called soothing, even with their odd texture. He was safe, at least for the time being, and even felt safe, for the first time since… he couldn't remember when.

And it seemed he had a friend, apparently. Tentatively, Jonny whispered a quiet "thank you" to the room as a whole, unsure of where to address when speaking to the ship that was all around you. In response, he felt the Aurora hum a little louder around him, just for a moment.

Between the humming of the ship and the soft purring bodies around him, it was frighteningly easy to fall asleep there, even with the pain, warm and safe as he felt.

—

After that, Jonny was more aware of the Aurora around him. He was able to recognize little tells in her, like one would with a human (though she's as far from human as you could get). A certain clunking sound she would make to get his attention; a whirring sound in her vents, almost like laughter, in response to his sarcastic comments; the now familiar rise and fall of her hum in acknowledgment when he talked to her.

She never tried to talk to him when he was around the Doc.

And that's what it was, wasn't it? She was talking to him. Maybe not with words, but in the closest thing to a language that she had, in the so many unique noises that made up her vocabulary. Maybe she had some way of communicating with her passengers, or maybe she didn't. He didn't know if whoever built her, or especially the navy that had been in possession of her before, would have wanted her to be able to talk to her crew. If she _did,_ it was probably somewhere in the controls, and that was the one place Carmilla kept him away from.

They made it work, though. He figured out her noises for _yes_ and _no,_ and that whirring sound was _definitely_ a laugh, something he always complained about when she made it at his expense.

Jonny quickly found out how beneficial having a friend like Aurora was. She was able to warn him when Carmilla wandered near wherever he was and was in a bad mood, that way he's able to keep out of her way or hide (and he would have tried to avoid Carmilla at all times, but that would quickly become suspicious, and he got the feeling she didn't want him communicating or knowing about Aurora), was able to lead him to the most interesting parts of the ship. There was a _lot_ of shit hidden in the labyrinth of the Aurora that he wasn't able to find on his own explorations: entire storage bays filled with boxes upon boxes of old artifacts from hundreds of different solar systems and time periods (boring), a few less storage bays filled with a wide variety of weapons and artillery (less boring).

Aurora wasn't fond of Jonny shooting into her walls, especially near the outer hull, so in return for her helping him he tried his best to not to. When he could, anyways. She probably wouldn't help him find any more cool shit if he ruins her interior, and he wouldn't admit it, but Jonny did feel kind of bad for hurting her. She was what could easily be considered his first (and only) friend, and he didn't _think_ hurting each other was something that friends did, so maybe he was a little more careful than he usually would have been when asked.

Even outside of when she would help him, Jonny found it was just… nice, to have someone to talk to. It was nice, to have a friend, finally. He had a feeling Aurora felt the same way; he couldn't imagine the Cyberian navy made for very good friends, probably hadn't even known she was sentient. It was probably as long a time since she had had a friend as it had been for him.

That subtle feeling of being watched over, of not being alone, becomes more prominent now that he's aware of the source of it, can communicate, somewhat, with her. Those rare instances of feeling safe become less far and few between, and he's able to sleep through the night without nightmares more often, even on the occasion that he didn't wake up to a dozen little tentacled cats using him as a space heater.

And slowly, but surely, the Aurora became home.

**Author's Note:**

> i may or may not write a second chapter, since i had originally planned for this to have a timeskip to later when more of the crew is around (which is why it ends sort of abruptly; it would specifically involve tim & the origin of why he likes the octokittens, as well as maybe nastya installing a way for aurora to talk to the crew & her and jonnys first proper conversation; ), if y'all want that lmk and i might try and write it since i already have a bit of it planned out! it'll probably be quite a bit shorter than this chapter though.
> 
> (also, i'm still working on 'a song calls out between the stars', if youre waiting on an update on that don't worry; it might be a bit just 'cause i've been busy but i'll get it updated soon, hopefully!)


End file.
